Cause for Wrinkles in Shar Pei Dogs Clarifies the Reason to Human Fever Syndromes

Hereditary periodic fever syndromes in human beings have been found to have a link with genetic mutation in the Shar-Pei dogs that is responsible for sagging or wrinkled skin in the breed!

The news on "Wrinkles in Shar Pei Dogs Clarifies the Reason to Human Fever Syndromes" has created a sensational buzz across the media... not only around the world wide web, but also across the entire media stream, including medical journals, videos, news releases and so on...

Human Fever Syndromes are characterized by repeated episodes of fever, accompanied with inflammation. Until the discovery of the root to the cause was made by a group of scientists, the pathogenic or autoimmune reasons were unknown. The team of researchers had burnt their midnight oil to unearth the cause of human fever syndrome. Studies have shown that it has been the same gene mutation that causes wrinkled skin in Shar Pei Dogs, is also the cause of inflammatory disease in human beings - human fever syndrome!

The gene mutation which brings excessively thick wrinkles in the skin of Shar-Pei dogs - sometimes called "wrinkle dogs" is also linked to a periodic fever disorder in human beings. A team of well versed US researchers discovered that the gene mutation that have been playing role in exhibiting wrinkles in Shar Pei could also have its implications on Human Fever Syndromes.

Owners and enthusiasts of Shar Pei dogs are well aware of the fact that this beautiful dog breed suffers from periodic fever disorder, although this problem have been brought under control through selective breeding. This problem is obviously one of the major reasons that have been diminishing the popularity of the breed. Scientists have been working hard to research on the inherited auto-inflammatory periodic fever syndromes in human beings, and finally found a resemblance to the periodic fever disorder in Shar Pei.

The heavily wrinkled skin of Shar pei is the consequence of excessive hyaluronan. hyaluronan is actually an anionic, nonsulfated glycosaminoglycan that is heavily distributed all through the connective, epithelial as well as neural tissues. In Shar Pei dogs, the over-activation of a gene called hyaluronan synthase 2 (HAS2) is the basic cause of heavy wrinkles on skin. Alongside, the over-activation of hyaluronan synthase 2 (HAS2) gene is also the root to periodic fever disorder in Shar Pei... documented by the scientists at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., and Uppsala University in Sweden. scientists have also mentioned that this finding, which was published in the March 17 online edition of the journal PLoS Genetics, will help the doctors and researchers improve their understanding of human inflammatory diseases.

According to the senior author Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, "the finding that hyaluronan is a major trigger of fever opens a new research field in canine and human inflammatory disease." Researchers have determined that in 60% of cases the genetic cause for periodic fever syndromes in human beings remain un-noticed.



Funding: This project had been supported and funded by the Swedish Research Council; FORMAS; the Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences, and Spatial Planning; the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research; in part by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases and the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health; the Chinese Shar-Pei Charitable Trust and the European Commission (FP7-LUPA, GA-201370).

The fund providers had no role in structuring the design of study, collecting data and analyzing the information. The funders also had no roles in formulating decision to publish or preparing the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors KL-T (who have been rewarded with EURYI award from the European Science Foundation), MO, and LT have filed a patent for development of a genetic test.